Marion's Wall Read online

  “Nick?”

  “No, he’s working late. I’m your neighborhood mugger, Rupert the Raper. Open up, lady; you’re next.”

  “What are you doing down there?”

  “Balancing on one leg. Setting a world’s rec—”

  “Well, come up here, Nick! I’ve got something to show you!”

  “Okay.” I turned toward the door, getting out my key, but before I could get it unlocked I heard Jan clattering down the inside stairs. She opened the door and stood grinning at me all excited; she was wearing the gray sweater and slacks she’d bought with the I. Magnin gift certificate her mother had given her at Christmas. In her hand was a small magazine, TV Guide, I saw, and her finger was holding a place. She didn’t speak, just opened the magazine and pointed, eyes bright.

  Thursday Evening, June 14, I read at the top of the page, and saw that Jan’s lacquered nail was touching the little TV-screen-shaped spot on which a 9 was superimposed in white. This was today’s date; Channel 9 was the Bay Area Public Television station. I took the magazine and, walking upstairs behind Jan, read the listing: 9:30 p.m., THE TOY THAT GREW UP. “Flaming Flappers,” silent film of the Twenties starring Richard Abel and Blanche Purvell: hip flasks, flaming youth, fast cars, and fast parties. Piano accompaniment following original cue sheets by Mabel Ordway.

  I was grinning when we hit the top of the stairs and said, “Kiddo, you don’t know it, but you probably just saved my life.” I kissed Jan, genuinely, so that she actually flushed. “Now how in the hell am I going to wait till nine-thirty?”

  At nine-twenty-eight I switched on the set in the living room, turned to 9, and stood waiting for sound and picture; across the room Jan sat on the chesterfield watching, and Al lay on the rug before it, more or less knocked out as he generally is after his dinner. The sound came on, music over a man’s voice, the music rising in volume as the voice receded. Then the picture popped on, swelling to fill the screen, rolling slowly; I tuned it to sharpness as the rolling slowed and stopped. Two men in molded-plastic chairs sat facing each other, one listening and slowly nodding, the lips of the other moving soundlessly as the music overrode his voice completely. They began contracting into the distance as the camera drew away, the men continuing to talk, one of them throwing his head back to laugh, as though they were so caught up they were unaware the program was ending.

  I sat down on the chesterfield, and we watched the station’s call letters, KQED, appear on the screen. For some time then, maybe twenty seconds or more, the letters remained there silently, the set humming. I said, “Shows class, you see; no commercials.” I slouched down comfortably, extending my legs, and put my feet—I was wearing soft slippers—on Al; he was in exactly the right place. His head lifted to stare at my feet, then at me. You could read his mind; he was wondering which was the least disagreeable course: to actually make the effort of getting up and moving out of range or to lie back and put up with it. He thought about it, then lay back again, sighing. I said, “This is part of the job of ‘being the dog,’ Al. It’s not all carefree barking. You’ve got to earn that daily seventy-nine-cent can of dog food; nothing’s free.” Making a supreme effort, he thumped his tail twice against the floor, and I took my feet off. The call letters disappeared and the toy that grew up appeared superimposed across a still figure of Charlie Chaplin, the sudden background music a thumping nickelodeon piano. A neat young man in suit and bow tie came on, standing before a painted backdrop representing a movie box office. He spoke pleasantly with seeming authority about films of the Twenties, the usual stuff. I said, “See the faintly amused smile? That shows he knows the old films are a little ridiculous. But get the careful voice, the scholarly note; you can’t claim he’s patronizing them.”

  “What’s the matter with you tonight?”

  “I’m Samuel Johnson, my mind a scalpel; I see through pretense everywhere. The truth is that ridiculous as it sounds, I’m all excited.”

  “Me too.”

  The screen faded to black, and—Jan’s shoulders actually hunched up in glee at this—the title of the picture appeared in white letters on a black that seemed faded and less than black. “Flaming Flappers,” it read incredibly, in a thin graceful italic of the period, “A Paramount Picture.” The piano accompaniment, no longer nickelodeon, thank God, receded in volume to become an almost unnoticeable background sound, but it made all the difference; we were in another time long before sound came to the movies. Cast and credits came fast, and not very many of them. The screen went momentarily dark, then lightened rapidly to show an enormous chauffeured car entering a circular white-graveled driveway between high wrought-iron gates, and Jan gripped my forearm. “I can’t believe it. I can’t stand it. We’re actually going to see Marion Marsh!”

  The car on the screen slowed, then stopped before the wide shallow stone steps of a great country house. I sat forward, peering, then identified the radiator ornament. “Pierce Arrow.” A subtitle appeared: “A Wealthy Long Island Estate.” The chauffeur opened a back door of the sedan and began helping an elderly woman out; she carried a lorgnette, wore a long dress and a round, straight-sided hat with a slightly curved top. I said, “Looks like she’s wearing a cake.”

  The scene cut to a huge room—tapestries and crossed spears on its walls—whose open French doors led out to a stone veranda with a heavy stone balustrade; beyond the veranda an enormous lawn stretched into the distance. I couldn’t tell if it was real or a backdrop. The elderly woman with the lorgnette was entering the room, and walking toward her from the veranda entrance was a young woman, Blanche Purvell, I recognized, the star of the picture. In contrast to the older woman’s dress, hers was knee-length and sleeveless. “Nice legs,” I said, and smiled as Jan glanced at me.

  The story developed fast: Blanche Purvell was rich, an heiress, in love with a poor man in the nearby town, even though her mother, the woman with the lorgnette, objected. The young man appeared to deliver groceries, wearing a cloth cap with a long curved peak, a white shirt, tie, and a sweater. With the help of a middle-aged woman in servant’s uniform, he unloaded them from a wicker basket onto a wooden-topped table in a strangely old-fashioned kitchen, and the girl happened in. They smiled lovingly at each other when the servant wasn’t looking, then walked out the back door and across a grassy expanse, passing a pair of tennis courts on which young people were playing. I wondered where it had been filmed, and what stood there now: a freeway on-ramp, I supposed; or a shopping center with a five-acre parking lot. The couple walked on toward a delivery truck, a black Model T Ford with a long, curved roof extending from windshield to tailgate, its sides open. It stood parked on a dirt road.

  As they crossed the grass toward it the girl looked around her, glanced at the house, then she and the boy held hands for the rest of the walk to the truck. “He’s after her money,” Jan said.

  “Of course. He wears that nutty cap because he’s bald as a bowling ball, and she doesn’t know it.”

  “What a surprise when he takes it off on their honeymoon.”

  “If he does.”

  A roadster with wooden-spoke wheels appeared, top folded back, and braked to a fast skidding stop, its wheels seeming to revolve backward slowly. A cloud of dust enveloped the boy and girl and Jan murmured, “Goody.” A young man in tennis flannels, a white knit sweater tied by its arms to hang down his back, slid over the closed door of the open car, a pair of rackets in one hand. He glanced superciliously at the truck, then imperiously beckoned the girl to follow as he walked on toward the tennis courts. “I adore him!” Jan said.

  “You’re a snob.” On the screen the girl turned to follow the young man in flannels, then looked longingly back at the boy left behind at the truck. She spoke and as her lips moved I said, “I love you, Ralph, but Frank smells better.” On the screen a subtitle said, “I’d rather stay with you!”

  We lost interest: the story developed too fast and too obviously, and the world, if any, to which it referred was remote to the point of incom
prehensibility. The film was a copy of a copy, probably, the faces washed out, very white, and Jan murmured, “They’re all eyes, lips and eyebrows, like old snapshots.”

  “Yeah. You know something? This film was made by light reflected into a lens. From the faces of real people. Who were once really there in exactly that scene, doing just what you see. I know that but I don’t believe it: that’s always been an old film, and they’ve never existed outside it.”

  The tink-tinkle of the piano never stopped, the blacks, grays and whites continuing to shift on the little screen, and we watched apathetically. Occasionally, one of us on guard, the other left to get something to eat, something to drink, to go to the bathroom, to wander the house. We’d watched for over forty minutes, and I was in the kitchen sitting at the table reading the green sport section of the morning Chronicle, eating potato chips. The sound and smell of these had miraculously brought Al out of his coma, and he was sitting on the floor looking up at me like a clumsy basset imitation of the terrier in front of the phonograph in the old ads, head cocked, ears up, as high as he could get them at least, and I tossed him the occasional potato chip. I’ve tried to teach him to catch, but his hound eyes don’t see well enough, and each chip simply landed on his nose, bounced off, and he’d have to hunt for it. Then he’d gobble it down and sit and yearn up at me for more.

  I like old Al, as I guess I’ve made clear, and his eyes fascinate me. They’re so huge and brown, so human and innocent. It’s as though a completely trusting four-year-old was staring up into your eyes out of a furry brown-and-white dog face. He sat doing this now, and I leaned down from the table to stare back into his eyes and ask him an old and familiar question in this situation. “Listen, who are you in there? Really? You’re not fooling me, you know, with that crazy dog suit.” I flipped up one of his incredibly long brown ears. “No dog has ridiculous ears like that; there’s where you made your big mistake!” I suddenly dropped to my knees beside him, grabbing him under the arms, and lowered him swiftly to his back. Holding him on the floor with one hand, I began rummaging rapidly through his white chest fur. “Where’s the zipper! I’m going to pull off this nutty dog suit right now! Exposing you for the impostor you are!” It was an old game, the kind of roughhouse he loves, and he struggled and fought with his hind legs and careful teeth. After a minute I let him up, quieting him down with a little ear-scratching. “Okay, you’ve won again.” I gave him a potato chip. “You’re clever, all right; we know that. But that zipper’s in there and someday I’ll find it.”

  “Nick, here it is, I think!” Jan called, and I slid the last chips out of the bowl onto the floor for Al and hurried back.

  The scene was a party in the big room of the picture’s beginning, now filled with people. Playing a grand piano, his shoulders bouncing rapidly to the rhythm, sat a young man with a hairline mustache and straight black hair slicked glossily back from his forehead. Beside him on the piano bench a short-skirted girl sat holding a drink from which she took frequent rapid sips, her free hand waggling at shoulder height, apparently in time to the piano. Another girl lay sprawled across the top of the piano, chin propped on elbow, and holding a cocktail glass. Rugs were rolled back and couples were dancing rapidly. On a great curved staircase people sat kissing; several others lay on a large chesterfield pantomiming drunkenness. Nearly everyone held a cocktail glass, drinking frequently, heads tossing far back.

  It was entirely unreal; there had never been such people nor such a party. These ancient photographs silently cavorting to the music of a steadily tinkling piano were absurd. Slowly the camera’s eye moved around the edges of the party to reveal: a couple sitting under a table exaggeratedly drunk; an expressionless butler entering the room with a tray of filled glasses and an opened bottle that someone immediately snatched; a fast-moving dice game on the floor, everyone in it on his or her knees, fingers snapping; a little cluster of men, including the arrogant tennis player, now wearing a tuxedo, surrounding a girl, nearly hiding her.

  Then two of the men moved casually apart, revealing the girl, and we sat staring: this, we knew from what my father had told us, was Marion Marsh. In short flapper dress like all the other women, her hair bobbed like theirs, a strand of hair lying on each cheek curved into a J, her face equally white, she stood listening to one of the men. Then she smiled and replied, and I could feel my attention gripped, I can’t quite say why. In a way past defining, with the simple magic of an occasional rare personality, this girl seemed real while the others did not. She was a small grainy figure in a corner of the glass screen but somehow she was truly speaking; I actually caught myself inching forward on the chesterfield as though I might hear her if I got closer, and I wanted to hear. Her hand came up, her forefinger shook in playful rebuke to one of the men, then she smiled, and Jan and I smiled with her. Now, in burlesqued entreaty, one of the men put his palms prayerfully together, then took her elbow, trying to lead her away from the others; and at the gentle sympathetic shake of her head and the rueful twist of her lips in refusal I felt a yearning for her as a woman. For no reason I really understood then or now, and unlike every other figure in the absurd scene, this one tiny gray-and-white figure was alive.

  She glanced away from the men around her to look across the room. And the flick of boredom that touched her face in that moment and was instantly gone as she turned back to them was genuine. Watching as she resumed her banter with the group, it seemed to me I understood the real feelings of the woman she was playing; afterward I remembered the whole scene as though I had heard her voice. And right now it even seemed believable that the caricatures around her, almost hopping in the exaggerated emphasis of their attention to her, felt what they were pantomiming. The camera was moving on, her image diminishing in size as the scene receded into the background, and I sat straining to see the last of her. And when the edge of the screen cut her from view, I sat, still in the spell of her presence, feeling that she was still smiling and speaking somewhere just out of view.

  For a long moment, the never-ending piano and the moving photographs continuing without any more meaning for me, that feeling lasted. Then I came out of it and turned to Jan. “Oh, boy,” I said softly. “She had it. She really did.”

  “Yes—oh, I could cry! Nick, she’d have been a star! We’d have known her name like—”

  “I know; Norma Talmadge or Clara Bow. There really isn’t any doubt about it.”

  “Well, it’s a shame! Think how your father must have felt, watching that.”

  “He’s gotten over it long since, I’m sure.”

  We sat watching the picture for a few moments longer, then Jan said, “I don’t think I can take another half hour of this, Nick; it’s nearly ten-thirty, and I’m tired. But I’m so glad I saw it.” She turned to look up at the writing on Marion’s wall behind us.

  “She comes on again, you know; right at the end.”

  “Only for a second or so your father said, and I’m too tired; I cleaned the house today. You watch, if you want. I’m going to bed and just lie there thinking about it till I fall asleep.”

  “Okay. Cookie the old man out first, will you?” I don’t remember how this got started but instead of just pulling rank and ordering Al out at the end of an evening, we’d rub a cookie across his nose. His tongue would come out automatically and swipe across his nose, he’d taste the cookie crumbs, his eyes would pop open, and he’d leap to his feet and actually trot out to the kitchen and the hinged dog-door I’d put into the bottom of the back door. He’d hop out, the cookie would be handed to him, and his door latched for the night. Quick, simple, no arguments, and everyone happy, at least till the cookie was gone.

  Jan kissed my cheek, cookied Al out, and I stayed for the end of the picture, about another thirty minutes, slumped on the chesterfield, staring at the screen, half awake. In the last moments of Flaming Flappers a bride, Blanche Purvell, tossed her bouquet to a cluster of bridesmaids at the foot of the staircase, and there was a final glimpse of Marion Mar
sh. Her actions were identical with those of the other bridesmaids, actually, and you saw her for no more than four seconds before her face was hidden by an upflung arm. But she had me; she’d made a fan. And I told myself, nodding my head, that even in that tiny scene she stood out from the rest. “The End” said the screen subtitle abruptly, the piano accompaniment rising to conclusion as I got to my feet and walked over to switch off the set before the guy in the bow tie could come back and tell us what we’d seen. “Well, Marion,” I said, murmuring into the new silence, “you were great. Absolutely great.”

  “Yes.”

  The light in the picture tube shrinking to a diamond point, I stood motionless, feeling the blood withdraw from the surface of my skin. I made my mind work, trying to consider alternatives. But there weren’t any. The unmistakable difference between what you imagine and what is real couldn’t be denied; I knew I’d really heard the word quietly spoken, with normal clarity, in a pleasantly husky feminine voice that was not Jan’s. I didn’t quite like to move, but I did, turning my head to search the entire room in the faint illumination from the front windows. A roof beam cracked, contracting after the warmth of the day, but I knew what it was, I was used to it, and I continued searching the room with my eyes.

  It wasn’t dark enough for anyone to be hiding, and there was no one to be seen. I’d known there wouldn’t be—I knew more than I’d let myself admit—and the hair on my neck and forearms was erect and prickling.